In the Company of Killers

by Bryan Christy

  Inside, the argument continued: “. . . slipping around those clubs has brought sin home with you . . .”

  Hungry grasped the mop and slid the bricks away with her toe. “Please,” she said, ushering Klay and Tenchant inside. Behind them, the steel door closed with a hush.

  “It’s my kota he has, mum,” a large woman said. “He has taken it for himself. In his desk drawer.“

  “Untrue,” the man said. “I do have it in my desk drawer, but I have it for your own good. You have your daughter’s wedding to think of . . .”

  Three people were seated at desks in what resembled a mini squad room. Whiteboard. Steel filing cabinets. Computers. Each had their breakfast laid out in front of them, none appeared to have started eating yet.

  Hungry cleared her throat. “Mr. Tom Klay and Mr. David Tenchant of The Sovereign magazine, this—I am rarely embarrassed to say—is my task force. They think we call them the Wild Dogs because they are three of our nation’s finest criminal prosecutors. But you will find, as with so many things in South Africa, the truth is much more straightforward.”

  Hungry gestured toward a large, light-skinned woman in a bright dress and ornate headscarf. “This is Miss Edna Sebati, who,” she said sharply, “is in charge of this office when I am away.”

  Miss Edna nodded.

  “Miss Minenhle Mthembu—Minnie—my junior prosecutor,” Hungry said. Minnie smiled. She was slender, in her late twenties, wearing a dark business suit and white blouse.

  “And last, Officer Julius Sehlalo, our investigator, formerly of the Hawks.”

  Sehlalo was handsome and fit, and as dark-skinned as Tenchant was pale. He wore a tailored navy-blue jacket over a black T-shirt. A gold medallion on a gold chain hung around his neck.

  Klay and Tenchant smiled hello, but that didn’t help much. They were outsiders, and tension in the room was thick. As he reached forward to shake Sehlalo’s hand, Klay noticed a holster under Sehlalo’s jacket, a reminder that this special prosecutor’s office came with special powers.

  Hungry walked behind Sehlalo’s desk. She opened a drawer and removed a large sandwich wrapped in foil. “This kota is the property of the state now. I will dispose of it according to the rules of eminent domain, affording just compensation to its owner in the form of mineral water and raw vegetables of her choice.”

  “State capture!” Miss Edna shouted.

  “Back to work,” Hungry said, stifling a smile. “I believe you have some.”

  Hungry led Klay and Tenchant through a doorway into her windowless private office. As she closed the door, Klay glimpsed Sehlalo offering a yogurt to his coworker. That was good. A team that stuck together was important.

  Hungry indicated her office’s two wooden chairs, placed the sandwich on a bookshelf, and took a seat behind her desk. She withdrew some papers and a laptop from her briefcase. “We refer to Miss Edna’s weight problem as her daughter’s wedding,” she explained. “Her daughter Rosie’s been married four years now and lives with her husband and two children in Cape Town, but sometimes we must find a way to express the things we dare not say.” She looked briefly at Klay. “Shall I give you a bit of background, Mr. Tenchant? This office—”

  “Tenchant’s fine.”

  “Tenchant. Okay then. You are here to do a story on our investigation and prosecution of the wildlife trafficker Ras Botha. Naturally, this is a sensitive situation. It is not generally appropriate for us to discuss our work with outsiders, especially foreign journalists, and never a case in progress. But Tom has written about Botha in the past. The Sovereign is respected throughout our country, and my superior is aware of your presence. There are certain limits you will have to abide by, but I have also instructed my team that you are here to support our investigation, and we, your story. We believe in your magazine, and we believe your work can help us.”

  “Any publicity is good publicity,” Tenchant said.

  “No. Good publicity is good publicity, Tenchant.” She looked at him sharply. “Let me give you a bit of background on who we are and what else we’re doing. Three years ago, our president, Gabriel Ncube, appointed his son-in-law, Justin Franklin, to be our country’s public protector. Franklin is now in prison, arrested for bribery by Officer Sehlalo.” She nodded in the direction of her doorway. “Our president saw opportunity in his son-in-law’s arrest. Gabriel Ncube’s entire career has been marred by criminal allegations, including murder, the rape of an underage girl, and selling off mining, defense, and other state interests to line his pockets. He saw a way to cleanse himself politically. He appointed the esteemed advocate Angela Mabaso to replace his son-in-law as public protector, and he very publicly encouraged her to create a new anti-corruption task force to rid his government of wrongdoing. She accepted his advice and created this ad hoc anti-corruption unit. But she did not accept his suggestions on how to staff it. Against the president’s wishes, she chose me.

  “The public has nicknamed our unit the Wild Dogs after the animals’ reputation for biting and eating their victims while on the run. Somehow, we have sometimes become the Hungry Dogs. Which I am afraid is also true . . .

  “We have a man sweep the office each morning,” she said, noting Tenchant’s eyes roaming over documents stacked on the floor and her shelves. “We can talk freely here.”

  Her eyes were still on Tenchant, assessing him, Klay realized. “But of course, nothing is ever certain so we do take basic precautions with our phones and other communications. Our internal communications are air-gapped,” she said, and nodded at a computer monitor on her desk. “My staff will brief you. Questions? No? Okay,” she said. “My team has seen you. They know who you are. They know you’re here to help. But they are not happy about it. Journalists are a great risk for us. If Ncube discovers I’m helping you, or that you are helping me”—she glanced at Klay—“we’re through. That is just how it is.”

  “Thank you, Hungry,” Klay said. “I briefed Tenchant on the security parameters we agreed to, and on the compartmentalization of our efforts. He understands you have a corruption investigation underway and that we are to stay well clear of it. We’re here to tell the story of Ras Botha. Exclusively. Any help your people can give Tenchant, of course, would be much appreciated. He’s ready to get to work. We both are.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Good. Let’s bring you back out there and try this again . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  Tenchant was on his hands and knees under a spare desk in the Wild Dogs’ office, his blue button-down shirt riding up his bony back. His tattooed arm emerged from under the desk. “Can somebody help me plug this in?” He was holding the universal travel adapter he’d brought from home.

  “That won’t work here,” Miss Edna said. She dug through her desk and found a South African adapter. “Give this to him, Minnie, please.”

  Tenchant plugged in his laptop and took a seat at the desk they had found for him. “What’s your Wi-Fi?” he asked.

  “Use your own phone for the internet,” Sehlalo said.

  “Hush!” said Miss Edna. “‘Laundromat’ is the network, Mr. Tenchant. The password is ‘Phambili!Kenako.’” She spelled it out for him.

  “Thank you. Just Tenchant.”

  “Use a VPN, please,” she said. “Choose outside South Africa. If you need to go on the website of target individuals or companies please let us know. We use Tor, but some things require a search from another location.”

  “Okay,” he said, typing rapidly. “I’m on the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission website. Do you have an ID or passport number for Botha . . . ?”

  “Exit that,” Sehlalo said. “I want a list of every site you intend to search before you go online.”

  Klay was leaning against a wall, watching. He called across the room to Sehlalo. “How do you like that weapon?”

  Sehlalo turned. He glanc
ed down at his shoulder holster, then back at Klay. “Gits ’er done,” he said affecting a cowboy twang, a hostile edge in his voice.

  “I was thinking it goes with your suit,” Klay said, taking a step forward.

  Sehlalo opened his jacket and drew his weapon, slowly but confidently, and placed it on the corner of his desk. He gestured for Klay to take a look. Klay picked it up. Klay preferred a Glock—short trigger pull, super reliable. But as appearances went the sharp-edged Glock looked and felt like it had been designed by Lego.

  Tenchant joined them. “Wow. Looks like something Batman would use. What is that?”

  “Vektor CP1,” Sehlalo said. “Nine mil.”

  “The pride of South Africa,” Klay said, handing it back to Sehlalo. “Don’t drop it, right?”

  Sehlalo accepted his gun and holstered it. “They fixed that over here.”

  “Glad you trust them,” Klay said. The two men glared at each other. Klay said, “Tench, you good?”

  Tenchant went back to his desk. “I’m good, boss.”

  “Okay.” His team stuck together too.

  Minnie dropped a stack of documents on Tenchant’s desk. “Our Botha case files.” Tenchant opened the top file and got to work.

  * * *

  • • •

  Klay didn’t see him again for two days. On the third day, Tenchant knocked on Klay’s hotel room door. Klay was dressed in old gym shorts and a T-shirt. Tenchant was wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a Sovereign T-shirt with the silver globe on the chest. He was holding his laptop.

  He let Tenchant in and went back to doing some sit-ups on a bath towel beside the bed. “Did you know every computer in the South African government, every single one, is compromised?” Tenchant asked, taking a seat at Klay’s desk.

  “Be done in a minute, Tench.” Klay grunted.

  Tenchant opened his laptop. “They used pirated software to save money, and now the entire country is Swiss cheese.”

  “Hungry’s office, too?” Klay asked.

  Exercise wasn’t pleasant for him anymore. He’d thickened in the years since his time as an amateur boxer. He was less wiry now, he liked to say, more kitchen appliance. Even in his thirties, exercise had been easier. He was pretty sure he used to bend at a different part of his stomach, and he knew push-ups didn’t used to sound like old barn doors on rusted hinges. He remained a powerful man, but his shape varied. Fitness ebbed and flowed from him, improving when he was home, declining in the field. He’d spent most of his professional life abroad.

  The Sovereign was famously generous when it came to travel expenses. His colleagues flew business class, stayed in four- and five-star hotels, sought out countries’ premier chefs and unique entertainment. But Klay, who measured himself by his work, secretly feared that failure might lurk around the next corner, and he might not get his story. He used his travel money to buy more field time. He flew coach, unless he had the miles, and slept in his bivy sack or in cheap motel rooms. He ate modestly and relied on Malarone dreams and his own dark thoughts for entertainment. He stayed in the field and reported—allowing his body to soften, his lungs to weaken—focusing his mind ever more firmly on his target.

  Klay did some leg raises, then flipped over for more push-ups. When he got home, he’d hit the gym again. This was his last assignment, after all. Last for the Agency, last for The Sovereign, too. Once he nailed Botha, he was going to clean up his life. Eat more vegetables. Get healthy.

  “Hungry’s system is a mess,” Tenchant said. “I pentested their internal system. Scanned the machines with Nmap, checked for vulnerabilities. Turns out their general network connects to the Public Protector’s office. They haven’t updated anything in months, so vulnerabilities everywhere. I fired up Metasploit-Framework using auxiliary scanners. First thing I checked for was BlueKeep and instant remote system shell. Bluekeep got leaked from the NSA, but you’d be surprised how—”

  “Sorry. You did what?”

  “Ah. I forgot. You’re illiterate. Nmap is a port scanner, but people have added a few vulnerability scripts so it can do double duty, at least on the more common problems.” Tenchant looked at Klay. Nothing. He waved his hands above his head. “I used some craaaazzzy computer code to perform a colonoscopy on the office’s general system—I don’t have access to their air-gapped machines—results were cancerous. Polyps everywhere. That help?”

  Klay paused his push-ups. “Thanks,” he said dryly.

  Tenchant smiled. “Point is, I’m staying off-line as much as I can in case there’s something devious lurking in their system. That’s why I took a cab over to the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission today. Botha has sixty-eight companies registered in his own name in South Africa. Nineteen in his wife’s. There’s a little of everything. Mining. Real estate. IT. Safari camps. Game breeding. Three golf courses. An arms manufacturer of some kind. About thirty companies called Alphan Investments. Alphan Investments 1, Alphan Investments 2 . . . He’s got websites set up for some of these, which will help me. I searched a few and found links to other companies outside of South Africa. Hey, how do you know so much about guns?”

  Klay lay on the floor, his forearm over his eyes.

  “Tom?”

  “What?”

  “The other day, with Julius. You knew all about his pistol. I asked him later, and he said you were right about the recall. Something about the early model firing when you dropped it. He said the Vektor’s not a very well-known gun.”

  Pride, Klay chided himself, your fucking pride. He had fired a Vektor during his training with Major Thomas, part of his foreign weapons module. “I did a story on guns once,” he said. “Mechanical evolution of firearms. Blunderbuss to AR-15s, I think it was. That one was so futuristic it just stuck up here.” He pointed to his head.

  “Yeah,” Tenchant said, “that’s what I figured. But when I searched online for gun stories by you, I didn’t find any . . .”

  Relentless fuck.

  Klay got to his feet, turned his back to Tenchant, and switched on the television with a remote. “Did you do a search on memory? Because mine’s not as good as it used to be. Must have been back when I freelanced. I did all kinds of stories back then. Happy to forget most of them.”

  “Yeah, no doubt. Anyway, tomorrow I’ll start data mining, run transforms on the companies and names I came up with, and generate a link analysis we can look at. It’s going to be a helluva spiderweb, I’ll tell you that.”

  Klay wiped his face with his T-shirt. “Do you have anything juicy I can use to surprise Botha? I’d like to disrupt his world tomorrow.”

  “Not yet. What time’s your meeting?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Not enough time. I could hack it.”

  Klay looked at him. “Hack what?”

  “The Dogs’ air-gapped network. I have the feeling Sehlalo’s not giving me everything, you know? If we go early, you’d just need to have everybody in Hungry’s office for a few minutes with the door closed. Or get them outside somehow . . .”

  “No. Out of the question. We’re not hacking Hungry’s internal system.”

  “Okay. I was just throwing it out there,” Tenchant said and went back to reading his email.

  “Out of curiosity,” Klay said, “could you do it?”

  Tenchant’s eyes stayed on his laptop. “Yep.”

  Klay sighed. “The answer is no.” For now, he thought.

  “Got it. Maggie says hello,” Tenchant said. “She wants to know if I’ve seen an elephant yet. Do you think we will?”

  “No. We’re on deadline.”

  Klay heard himself and paused. When he was starting out with The Sovereign, he had resisted getting emotionally involved in his stories’ victims. His interest was limited to how and where animals or their parts were being trafficked. One day Eady had pulled him aside. “You have to see the animal
s in the wild, Tom. Get to know what you’re working to protect.” The old man had handed him a plane ticket to Tanzania. One evening during that trip, driving back to camp, Klay noticed a lone elephant standing among the trees. The light had fallen and the gray matriarch was nearly invisible among the trees’ bare branches. Something caught his eye. He turned in his seat and realized an enormous herd of elephants was lined up shoulder to shoulder along the road, just one tree deep in the bush. An entire society had been watching him, just a few feet away, and he’d almost missed it. Over the years, when he needed reminding why he did what he did, he thought about that evening.

  Klay looked at Tenchant. “Tell Maggie we’ll do a quick game drive.”

  “Excellent,” Tenchant replied, typing.

  “It’s important to see what you’re working to protect,” Klay added, but Tenchant wasn’t listening. He was focused on his note.

  Under a hot shower, Klay thought about Hungry. He thought about truth and lies, and who he was and who he hoped to be. Maybe she could handle the truth about him—or, more accurately, the lie. She’d hate him for his dishonesty. Dishonesty was betrayal—he knew that—but maybe she would see his lies differently after he told her what he’d been working to protect . . . No. He could not put her at risk like that. Their only chance was for him to quit. Once he was out, they could start over. He didn’t know the outcome, but he did know the sequence. Quitting came first.

  He was drying himself when he heard Tenchant exclaim, “Holy shit!”

  He poked his head out of the bathroom. “What?”

  “Look at this!”

  Klay pulled on the hotel bathrobe. “What is it?”

  Tenchant spun his laptop around to show him a photograph of a large group of people standing on the steps outside The Sovereign building.